Our Team

Our team of leaders in medicine, entertainment, education, and technology is helping to train healthcare providers to be more empathetic, compassionate, and effective.

**Dr. Jon LaPook**

Founder and President

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Dr. Jon LaPook

Founder and President of The Empathy Project, the Mebane Professor of Gastroenterology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and a gastroenterologist at NYU Langone Health. Dr. LaPook was recruited to NYU Langone Health to establish this project and has the endorsement of the Dean, Dr. Robert Grossman and the Chief of Medicine, Dr. Steven Abramson. Dr. LaPook graduated with honors from Yale University and received his M.D. from Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons where he was elected into AOA. As Chief Medical Correspondent for CBS News, he has done more than 1,000 broadcast reports, appearing on 60 Minutes, CBS Evening News, Face the Nation, CBS This Morning, and CBS Sunday Morning. He has won five Emmy awards, two Edward R. Murrow awards, and been named a Peabody Award finalist.

Dr. Jennifer Adams

Director, Center for Empathy in Medicine

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Dr. Jennifer Adams

Director, Center for Empathy in Medicine. Jennifer G. Adams, MD is the inaugural director of the NYU Langone Center for Empathy in Medicine, working to develop a comprehensive strategy to deliver, evaluate, and assess the impact of empathy education at NYU Langone, and also spearhead collaborations to define key education and clinical topics to be addressed and explore emerging technologies to evolve and maximize programming. Dr. Adams is an associate professor in the Department of Medicine, associate program director of the internal medicine residency, director of the primary care residency tracks, and a preceptor and attending physician at Gouverneur Health.

Greta Elysee

Program Coord, Center for Empathy In Medicine

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Greta Elysee

Program Coordinator, Center for Empathy In Medicine. Works collaboratively with leadership and staff at the Institute for Innovations in Medical Education to support educational research, managing grants, special projects, and initiatives. She has more than 10 years of experience as a public health professional working in health disparities research, outreach, education, and advocacy.

**Delia Ephron**

Script Consultant and Advisor

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Delia Ephron

Script Consultant and Advisor. Delia Ephron is the author of the recently-published best-selling memoir, "Left on Tenth: a Second Chance at Life." She is also a novelist, screenwriter, essayist, and playwright. Her novels include best-selling "Siracusa"; her books of essays and humor include "SisterMotherHusbandDog (etc)" and "How To Eat Like A Child". Her many movie credits – co-written with her sister Nora Ephron -- include “You’ve Got Mail,” “Michael,” and “Hanging Up,” based on her novel. Her writing has been published in "The New York Times", "Vogue," and "Vanity Fair". She is part of The Empathy Project, a collaboration of doctors and filmmakers who create films to teach empathy to doctors. She lives in New York City.

**Dr. Jodi Halpern**

Content Contributor and Medical Advisor

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Dr. Jodi Halpern

Content Contributor and Medical Advisor. Jodi Halpern MD, PhD is Chancellor’s Chair and Professor of Bioethics at UC Berkeley. Halpern’s research integrates psychiatry and philosophy to examine the emotional basis of beliefs about the future and how innovative technologies influence empathy and social justice. Halpern’s book, "From Detached Concern to Empathy: Humanizing Medical Practice", and multiple articles where she originated the concept of “empathic curiosity,” catalyzed a wave of change in medical education. Her second book, "Remaking the Self in the Wake of Illness" (expected 2024), presents a new model for post-traumatic growth, and she has begun a third project examining how AI influences medicine, psychotherapy, caregiving and other relationships, Engineering Empathy. She is Faculty Director of the Berkeley Group on the Ethics and Regulation of Innovative Technologies and a co-founder the UC Berkeley Kavli Institute for Ethics, Science and the Public. She is an international speaker on the use of empathic curiosity in conflict resolution and the ethics of technology. Halpern received the Guggenheim 2022 Award in Medicine and Health. Her newest body of research examines how innovative technologies such as gene editing and artificial intelligence transform relationships and society in unexpected ways.

**Karen Zornow Leiding**

Project Advisor

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Karen Zornow Leiding

Project Advisor. She is a nonprofit arts administrator and entrepreneur. Most recently she served as Director of Marketing & Communications for the nonprofit Big Apple Circus. Previously she worked for the Arts & Business Council of New York (ABC/NY) and at Manhattan Theatre Club.

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Ann Misiaszek Sarnoff

Project Advisor. Ann has spent most of her career building businesses, brands and franchises in the media industry and was most recently Chair and CEO of WarnerMedia Studios and Networks Group. Ann sits on the boards of PayPal Holdings, Inc., the Motion Picture and Television Fund, Realm Media and Women's Tennis Association Ventures. She also serves as Vice Chair of the boards of The Shed and Georgetown's McDonough School of Business. Ann is a graduate of Georgetown University and Harvard Business School. Ann and her husband, Richard, are the proud parents of Rachel Sarnoff, MD (Class of 2019 at NYU Medical School).

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Deborah Rubin

Managing Director for The Empathy Project. She is also a Producer for the CBS Evening News. Her work has been awarded a duPont-Columbia Award and has been nominated for Emmy and Peabody Awards.

Colleen Gillespie, PhD

Evaluation Director, Center for Empathy in Medicine

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Colleen Gillespie, PhD

Director of Evaluation and Research, Center for Empathy in Medicine. Colleen Gillespie is the Director of the Division of Education Quality within the Institute for Innovations in Medical Education and the Director of Evaluation for the Program in Medical Education Innovations and Research at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Colleen received her PhD from NYU. She focuses on improving education and training and building the evidence base for medical education through curriculum and outcomes-focused evaluation. Her program of research broadly encompasses understanding the influences of health professionals’ communication, interpersonal, meta-cognitive and collaborative skills in effectively educating, activating and caring for patients. Colleen is particularly excited about measuring the development and application of empathy skills within NYU’s world class clinical skills assessment program and supporting efforts to demonstrate the impact of the practice of empathy.

**Dr. William Fisher**

Managing Editor and Medical Advisor

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Dr. William Fisher

Managing Editor and Medical Advisor to The Empathy Project. He is a board certified psychiatrist. He is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and is on the faculty of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research.

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Aaron Frank

Medical Advisor, Producer. Aaron Frank is in his fourth year at UC Irvine School of Medicine and is an inductee into the AOA Honor Medical Society. Prior to medical school, Aaron Frank worked in various producer roles for television networks including Discovery, History, Vice, and ABC. Since joining The Empathy Project he has produced several learning modules for the WISE-MD platform. He will be applying into Internal Medicine for residency and plans to continue bridging his production skills with his passion for innovating medical education.

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Kate Lear

Creative Consultant. Kate Lear is a writer, theater producer and philanthropist. As a Trustee of the Frances Lear Foundation, she supports work in the areas of the arts, the environment and juvenile justice. She is the proud board chair of Ballet Hispanico of New York and a member of the Committee for the Jerome Robbins Dance Division at the New York Public Library.

Dr. Joseph Ravenell

Content Contributor and Medical Advisor

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Dr. Joseph Ravenell

Content Contributor and Medical Advisor. Dr. Ravenell is an Associate Professor in NYU Langone’s Departments of Population Health and Medicine with Tenure, and Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. He obtained his medical degree from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, completed his internal medicine residency training at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and finished a Clinical Epidemiology and Health Services Research Fellowship at Weill Cornell Medical College. Dr. Ravenell has been a principal investigator of clinical trials to test community-based strategies to improve colon cancer screening and cardiovascular disease prevention among Black men in urban settings.

**Dr. Rachel Pam Sarnoff**

Content Contributor and Medical Advisor

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Dr. Rachel Pam Sarnoff

Content Contributor and Medical Advisor to The Empathy Project. Dr. Sarnoff graduated from Brown University and received her M.D. from NYU School of Medicine. In 2018, she was inducted into the Gold Humanism Honor Society, recognized for her excellence in clinical care, leadership, compassion, and dedication to service. At UCLA she completed Internal Medicine Residency and Chief Residency. She is now embarking on a self-crafted training program focusing on Disorders of Gut Brain Interaction (DGBI) as a niche within Internal Medicine.

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Maura Minsky

Director of The Empathy Project. Maura has worked at the intersection of film, education, and social justice for 2 decades. For 18 years she led Scenarios, a ground-breaking non-profit from its founding, using narrative films, written by teens and directed by Hollywood’s finest, to bring sexual health education into the 21st Century. Maura has leveraged her love of story working at The Shoah Foundation, Teachscape, and ABC News. She is a Rockwood | JustFilms Fellow and the recipient of The Humanitarian Award from her alma mater, Kenyon College.

**Yuliya Yoncheva, PhD**

Research Faculty, Center for Empathy in Medicine

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Yuliya Yoncheva, PhD

Yuliya Yoncheva is a Research Assistant Professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Her liberal arts education sparked her love of learning across disciplines, which led to a PhD in neuroscience from the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences. Awards by the National Institutes of Health supported her early career training and clinical research of educational interventions. At The Empathy Project, she is excited to build bridges between communication skills, empathy and AI technologies in medical education and health care.

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Siobhan Dunne

Creative Consultant. She is a professional filmmaker, editor, and screenwriter with numerous credits in film and television.

**Dr. Loren Galler Rabinowitz**

Content Contributor and Medical Advisor

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Dr. Loren Galler Rabinowitz

Content Contributor and Medical Advisor to The Empathy Project, Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Dr. Rabinowitz is practicing gastroenterologist, whose gender equity-focused work has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine and Gastroenterology, among others. She is a former US Bronze Medalist in ice dancing, a graduate of Harvard University, and received her M.D. from Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons.

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Walt Leiding

Project Advisor. He was the Director of Bureau Operations for CBS News, overseeing technical operations for all domestic and international CBS News bureaus.

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Rebecca Rubin RN

AGPCNP. Rebecca is an adult-gerontology primary care nurse practitioner and certified oncology nurse. She works at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.